The major difference in this recipe vs. your typical recipes is that your sugar goes with the wet ingredients (emulsified with the eggs, oil, butter, and vanilla), and instead of just dumping a pint of blueberries into your batter, you cook 1 cup of the berries down into a tart jam, and swirl it in after you’ve portioned your batter into the muffin cups. A bit tedious, yes, but quite worth it.

The stuff sprinkled on top is lemon sugar. It gives it a hit of sweet on your palate, which makes the muffin seem more like a dessert. If you want a less sweet breakfast treat, skip it, or just add the zest to the batter instead (I would rub it into the sugar–yes, with my fingers–before emulsifying it with eggs, which helps release the oils in the zest.)